Electronic communication among enterprises such as vendors and suppliers is currently accomplished through networks, including private networks and through public networks, such as the Internet. A participant in the network establishes a connection to the network, and is thus able to transmit a communication, such as an electronic message, to another participant in the data network. The data network delivers the communication from the source participant to the destination participant.
The primary alternative used today for connecting enterprises into a network is a combination of centralized and distributed architectures. A centralized architecture is characterized by a central node, or hub, through which all communications pass. A distributed architecture, on the other hand, provides multiple hubs through which electronic communication may be routed, instead of using a single, central hub. However, whether an architecture is centralized or distributed, the current methods for connecting enterprises suffer from the inability to maintain the overall state of the network.
Without the overall state being maintained, each company or centralized application would have to maintain state independently. A company, for example, would have to determine whether its connectivity to its supplier is operational before initiating any electronic communication with the supplier. For this to be accomplished, every company and application would have to connect directly with every other company and application. This connectivity approach is not feasible for industry segments with many companies and applications.
In addition, none of the existing system architectures provides a means to integrate process activities. With a centralized application, all processing occurs at the centralized application. A centralized system can conduct an overall or end-to-end business process, but needs to own the singular public processes as well. Thus, there is no inherent means to integrate process activities contained in other applications with the centralized applications. On the other hand, distributed systems allow several companies to conduct singular public processes. However, with distributed systems, not only is there a lack of any means to integrate process activities together, but greater complexity arises from the need to automate multiple company processes into an overall process.